


Story Received, Story Included

by infernalandmortal



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-04-30 07:43:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14492151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infernalandmortal/pseuds/infernalandmortal
Summary: It’s their picture, the one in the silver frame that she loves. And on it, a note in a slightly-less-messy hand:Come home. Please.It’s not an apology. But it’s something.Based on the events of season 5 and inspired by an excerpt from "Editors Pages: The Long and the Short of It" by Richard Siken. Set in my Little Beast verse sometime before the epilogue.





	Story Received, Story Included

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! It's me!
> 
> This fic is set in the Little Beast verse, but it's not 100 percent necessary for you to read that fic before you read this one, although you might understand the setting a little more than you do...
> 
> Here's hoping s5 ends like this fic does.

_ “I’ve been rereading your story. I think it’s about me in a way that might not be flattering, but that’s okay. We dream and dream of being seen as we really are and then finally someone looks at us and sees us truly and we fail to measure up. Anyway: story received, story included. You looked at me long enough to see something mysterious under all the gruff and bluster. Thanks. Sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them.” _

* * *

_ One _

She sits on their bed and thinks about him.

There’s three picture frames on the nightstand that formerly belonged to them both. One frame contains the only photograph she would allow Costia to take of her: her smile bright and loud, her eyes glinting in the sun bouncing off the yellow dress Raven bought her for John’s birthday. The second holds a photograph of John and Raven on the beach, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, knee-deep in sea water. In the background, Monty and Jasper fling themselves into the large, high-tide waves.

Emori picks up the third frame. It’s the smallest, but the best damn picture she’s ever seen. She’s curled on John’s lap, his arms wrapped tightly around her waist, her head resting on his chest. His lips are pressed against her forehead, and her bad hand rests on his shoulder.

He had taken that photograph with his phone, saying he wanted to always remember them like that, soft and safe and impossibly in love. It was such a disarmingly sweet request that she had let him. Every time she looked at it, she felt a sense of pride and happiness so strong it made her want to cry.

Now it makes her want to cry for a different reason.

“You good?” Raven asks, leaning against the doorframe. She starts to say something, then stops short when she sees Emori’s stricken face, the way she’s holding the frame tightly with both hands. “Oh, Emori…”

“I have to believe he’ll come back,” she whispers, staring resolutely at the wall. The shadows from the power lines outside their window swinging in the breeze stain the paint. The room is dark despite the summer sun burning through the blinds. She doesn’t have to touch them to know they’re coated in the dust of disuse. She doesn’t have to lay back to know the bed is cold.

“It’s been a month,” Raven says guardedly. She’s afraid of false hope, and Emori doesn’t blame her. She is too, but she can’t help it; she  _ misses  _ him, misses them, the way they used to be back before he suddenly decided...what? That he was too good for her?

Or maybe…

“He thinks I’m too good for him,” she says, sitting up straight, the epiphany coming three months too late. “He’s self-destructing because he’s scared I’ll figure it out. He’s afraid of needing me because I might leave.”

Raven’s eyes narrow. She frowns, then softens. “Maybe,” she says with a shrug. Then, her mouth twisting sardonically with the question, “Want me to ask?”

Emori laughs once, the short, dark sound crashing against the room’s heavy air. “No. I’m not doing that to you again.”

“You know what you  _ could  _ do?” Raven suggests.

“Move out?” Emori asks, mimicking Raven’s tone.

“I mean, if you’re offering.” 

Emori laughs. She knows Raven doesn’t really mind Emori’s sudden weight on her living room couch or her things in the bathroom - it was Raven’s idea, after all - but she also knows that her welcome is wearing thin.

_ Let me come home _ , she thinks to John, wherever he might be.  _ Come back to me. _

She puts the picture frame back on the nightstand. There’s no dust there. She shivers. He’s been looking at it too.

* * *

_ Four _

She sees him in fits and starts: working at the diner, walking down toward the corner store, sitting in Raven’s living room. He’s still close with Raven, though Emori suspects he’s cut off the rest of their friends, and she’s fine with it, she really is, especially since Raven usually warns her when he’s coming over.

Raven didn’t give her a warning this time. 

“Hi,” he says when she closes the door. She jumps, then drops the bag of groceries – a thank you-slash-apology for Raven – on the floor. 

He’s a mess. Bruises litter his arms and cuts mar his knuckles. She feels herself wince in sympathy, then tamps the pain down. 

“You look like hell,” she tells him, brushing past him toward the kitchen. He follows her with the bag she forgot by the door. 

“Emori -“

“Don’t,” she says softly, because she  _ can’t.  _ She  _ can’t  _ resist reaching for his bloody hand, she  _ can’t  _ resist his voice and his bright eyes boring straight into her soul. All he does is dredge up every sharp word he flung at her and every drop of poison she forced down his throat. All he does is hate and ache and break. 

All he does is make her miss him. All he does is make her wish she had never chosen to love him and hate him at the same time. 

“Emori -“

“Are you here to say you’re sorry?” she asks, turning so they’re eye-to-eye, hand-to-hand. His finger traces the naked skin of her left hand. She fights the urge to close her eyes at the touch. 

_ I’m not sleeping well,  _ the circles under his eyes say.  _ I’m not eating,  _ say the sharpness of his collarbones and the hollows of his cheeks.  _ I miss you _ , says his gaze as it flits from her eyes to her lips and back again. 

She reaches up and rests her hand at the nape of his neck. “I won’t come back until you say it,” she says lowly because as much as she misses him, she is  _ angry.  _ “You need to talk to me.” John scoffs. Suddenly, his skin burns her. She steps back and looks at him, reproachful and accusing. “You fucking know I’m right.”

“Piss off, Emori,” he hisses, suddenly all teeth and raw nerves. He balls his hands into fists, splitting and stretching the abused skin. “You think you’re-”

“I’m what?” she shouts. “I’m what, John? Say it, you coward. SAY IT!”

“Murphy?” Raven calls, slamming the front door. She could probably hear Emori shouting from outside. “John Murphy, I swear to God-”

“Say it,” Emori hisses, suddenly toe-to-toe with him again. “Say it, John.”

“You think you’re so perfect?” he growls. She hardens her heart and her eyes, steeling herself for whatever comes next, for his regurgitation of the poison she forced him to swallow the last time they fought.

Was it really only four months ago? It feels like a lifetime.

“I can’t stand the sight of you,” he bites out, broken and vicious. “I hate you.”

“Well, fuck you too,” Raven says, coming up behind him. Her voice is mild; she’s gauging the situation and probably wondering if she should get Bellamy to come and restrain John. “Get out of my house, J. We’ll talk later.”

“We said we’d meet here,” he says, not taking his eyes off Emori.

“My house, my rules.” She shoves him in the back. “Get outta here.”

He turns on his heel and takes the back door. Emori stands there, in the middle of the kitchen, and, much to her humiliation, bursts into tears.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Raven murmurs, reaching for her, guiding them both to sit on the cold linoleum floor. “Oh, Emori, shhh, it’s okay.”

It’s not okay, but Emori doesn’t want to talk about it. It feels like her gut is twisting inside out, like her heart is squeezed into a vice. She misses him, aches for him. Even though she knows he’s just lashing out mindlessly, it hurts her to know he can make himself say those things to her, even if they are empty lies.

She cries until she can’t, and then she gets up, thanks Raven, and goes to work.

* * *

“What the fuck happened to you?” is the first thing Anya says when Emori clocks in. The diner is empty, thank God. Emori can’t deal with any more people.

“Language!” Lincoln yells from the office, then stops in his tracks when he sees Emori’s red, swollen face. “ _ Strikon _ , what happened?”

“What did Murphy do?” Anya asks, not even missing a beat. She’s the righteous anger to Lincoln’s soft sympathy, and Emori feels immeasurably grateful for them both.

She shakes her head. “I know he didn’t mean it,” she mutters. “But it hurt all the same.”

“I keep telling him he needs to talk to you,” Lincoln sighs. “Doesn’t seem like he’s listening.”

Anya reaches out to brush a hair from Emori’s face. “Don’t take that bitch back without an apology.”

Emori laughs. Her chest is tight. She wants to cry again, or maybe just sleep for about ten years. “I won’t.”

Anya wants to send her home early, but Emori convinces her that she wants to work. It’s a good distraction, and a buffer between her feelings and what she knows she has to do afterward. The seven hours go too fast - something she doubts she’ll ever be able to say again.

“Where are you going?” Anya asks after her shift ends, as if she knows Emori’s not going straight home.

“To our- to John’s place.”

Anya slams the refrigerator door. “After what he did? Really?”

“I need more clothes.” The words sting. It’s an admission that their separation is taking longer than she had hoped.

“Want me to come with you?”

Emori fixes her with a stare. “Can you promise to be civil?”

Anya thinks for a moment. “Probably not, no.”

Emori nods. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Give ‘em hell, kid,” Anya calls after her. Emori shakes her head. She’s got nothing left to give.

For the first time in a while, she misses Otan. She wishes he was here, walking with her to John’s apartment. She wishes he could hold her like he did when she was little, with her head tucked into his shoulder, dark and safe from anything that could hurt her.

_ Everyone leaves _ , she thinks bitterly.  _ No one wants to stay. _

It’s a warm summer night. Twilight is settling into the valley, and with it comes a warm breeze that stirs Emori’s hair and smoothes the exhaustion from her face. Octavia speeds past her on her bike with a shouted “hey!”, and Costia gives Emori a wave from her perch on the curb near Lexa’s house.

“How are you doing?” the younger girl asks as Emori nears. She’s one of the few people who knows the gory details of her and John’s separation. “You’ve been crying.”

Emori shrugs. “I’m fine, kid.”

“I’m not a kid,” Costia protests mildly, trying and failing to fit the lens back onto her camera’s battered body.

“You’re fourteen. You’re a kid.”

Costia rolls her eyes. “Whatever. Want to tell me what happened?”

“I’d rather not.” She’s bone-deep tired. Thankfully, Costia understands. “I have to get to John’s before he gets home.”

“Take care, okay?”

“Worry about yourself,” Emori says gently. Costia grins up at her and finally snaps her lens into place.

* * *

_ Seven _

“There’s a package for you,” Raven tells Emori when she gets back from her shift at the diner. “It’s got no address, just your name… in really shitty handwriting, might I add.”

Her heart leaps into her throat. She grabs the envelope and carefully tears it open.

“What is it?” Raven yells from the couch. Emori brings it over, cradling the envelope’s contents in her bad hand.

It’s their picture, the one in the silver frame that she loves. And on it, a note in a slightly-less-messy hand:  _ Come home. Please. _

It’s not an apology. But it’s something.

She grabs her keys and sprints the eight blocks to their -  _ his  _ \- apartment building. She doesn’t let herself think, won’t let herself speculate. When she lets herself in, she’s not even remotely surprised to see him standing there, right in front of the door, looking almost helpless.

She’s hit with a flood of memories: the first time she stood in this doorway and looked at the framed photos on the wall. The first night she spent on that couch, her duffle bag of stolen tech tucked away underneath. The first night he kissed her, the first time they-

She tears her mind away, back to the present. He looks lost. His hands hang aimlessly at his sides; his eyes are vacant and afraid, trained on the carpet under his feet. When he speaks, his voice is rough from disuse.

“You made a place here,” he says slowly. “You fit in here now, and it’s good but- but you’re changing. And I’m not. I don’t want- you deserve better. I’m not good enough. I’m not enough. So I chose for you. And I was wrong.”

He meets her eyes. There are tears there, in both of theirs. “I don’t hate you. I hate myself. And all I want to do is look at you.”

She wraps her arms tight around her torso. This is too much; she doesn’t want this to be another false hope, another build-up to another breakdown.

“I’m sorry, Mori,” he whispers. “Please forgive me.”

The fist around her heart that has kept it still for the past seven months loosens. She reaches out for him, and he comes. He wraps his arms around her waist and pulls her to him, hiding his face in the crook of her neck and letting out a wet sigh.

“Of course I forgive you, you idiot,” she murmurs in his ear, feeling him smile weakly against her shoulder.

“Sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them,” John whispers, and Emori grins because she knows those words as sure as she knows the man who loves them.

“I love all your sides,” she tells him, bending down so he moves his head and looks her in the eye. “I love you, John Murphy.”

He kisses her nose, her cheeks, her eyelids, and tangles his hands in her hair. “It’s short,” he notices, something akin to wonder in his voice.

She shrugs. “I was bored.”

He snorts. “Apparently.” He kisses her forehead. “You’re beautiful. You’re incredible, and I almost ruined it.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she says, rising up to kiss him firmly on the mouth. She swallows his gasp of surprise and backs him into the wall, laughing in the back of her throat when his back hits the light switch, flooding the apartment with harsh light.

“Fina-fucking-ly,” Raven yells from the doorway. They break apart, equally shocked. “What?” she says, totally innocent. “I have a key.”

“For emergencies,” John grumbles, running his hands through his hair. Emori fights the urge to bite his lower lip. “This isn’t an emergency.”

“Yes it is,” Raven says. “I’m doing your dishes.”

Emori sees that yes, the kitchen is a mess. In fact, the whole apartment is. “I’ll do it,” she tells Raven. “I’m coming home.”

“Hence the ‘fina-fucking-ly’,” Raven says, giving them both a cheeky grin. “Fine. I’ll go. You can come get your stuff tomorrow,” she tells Emori. Then, she looks at John. “Get your shit together faster this time. You almost ruined a good thing. Don’t do it again.”

John nods. His grip on Emori’s waist tightens. “I won’t.”

Emori knows he means it.

  
  



End file.
